Reaching new heights: How have Europeans grown so tall?

Astronauts in space can grow up to 3 percent taller during the time spent living in microgravity, NASA scientists say. That means that a 6-foot-tall (1.8 meters) person could gain as many as 2 inches (5 centimeters) while in orbit.

(cc photo by dionhinchcliffe)

Alex Tabarrok links to some new research further establishing the conclusion that being tall makes people happy:

Roger Lewis makes the case in The Washington Post for taller buildings in DC. I agree with what he says, though I think he’s far too ginger about calling for taller buildings in the existing central business district. Most people seem to think the downtown height limit has something to do with the Capitol Dome. So what if we replaced the current 130 foot limit with something closer to the actual 288 foot Capitol building? Say we let people go up to 260 feet?

To amplify Atrios’ point a bit, while of course taller buildings will make an area denser, you don’t actually need buildings to be particularly tall in order to have walkable urbanism. This video from Dan Zack indicates that people are actually pretty bad at guesstimating the residential density of various areas, primarily because of an over-reliance on building height as a cue:

Here is the abstract to a new paper by Angus Deaton and Raksha Arora.

Orthopaedic surgeon Bai Helong hikes up his trousers, places his foot on his desk and marks the spot just below his hairless knee where he cuts into the legs of patients who want to be taller.Over the past 15 years, Bai has given the gift of height to about 3,000 patients aged 14 to 55 -- Chinese, Americans, Germans, Japanese -- about half of whom went through with surgery simply because they did not like being short."I'm something of an authority in this field," explains Bai, who uses a technique he developed himself at a modest private clinic in the suburbs of Shanghai.

Orthopaedic surgeon Bai Helong hikes up his trousers, places his foot on his desk and marks the spot just below his hairless knee where he cuts into the legs of patients who want to be taller.Over the past 15 years, Bai has given the gift of height to about 3,000 patients aged 14 to 55 -- Chinese, Americans, Germans, Japanese -- about half of whom went through with surgery simply because they did not like being short."I'm something of an authority in this field," explains Bai, who uses a technique he developed himself at a modest private clinic in the suburbs of Shanghai.